


Never Love Him Right

by Star_Nymph



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU - Comicverse
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-04
Updated: 2013-04-03
Packaged: 2017-12-07 10:17:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/747379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star_Nymph/pseuds/Star_Nymph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jason had finally gotten his revenge—he didn’t want it anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Never Love Him Right

“The fuck did you just say to me, Pretender?”

“I love you. I said I love you, Jason.”

—

He screeched nononono no this wasn’t how it was supposed to be fuck no! but the panicked words wouldn’t leave his mind and flow out of his mouth; they stay, stuck, behind the barriers of his helmet and his skin.

He wished the hand, wrapped strongly around his wrist, and the fingers, entwined with his own, would break and crumble into stone and dust. Statue—he wished Tim was a statue; a statue with no heart like he always pretended to be.

Statues are easy to shatter into meaningless pieces—Tim was supposed to be easy to shatter for him.

He wanted to fall, to descend off the building, to collide with the ground and never get up again. The weight on his shoulders, which hovered over his chest, and felt like sandbags on his head was getting too unbearable. This wasn’t fair, he spoke in his thrashed mind, this wasn’t fucking fair.

No, fuck it, it wasn’t. This wasn’t fair to him, Babybird. You weren’t being fucking fair.

The words begged to be torn from his voice box so that they may cover and destroy what Tim had released unto him. He couldn’t; he was choking with fear and rage, his quivering lips hidden behind the shrine of his helmet.

Tim is no better—the fucking coward—under his borrowed mask and borrowed name telling him that he fucking loved him in his goddamn toneless voice.

Coward.

Fucking coward.

His beautiful fucking coward—fighting his high tower walls to say what he shouldn’t be saying. He can’t be in love with Jason; it wasn’t supposed to be that fucking way. It was never supposed to be that fucking way.

—

“You…you fucking love me? Pretender, what kind of weed are you smoking?”

“…Jason…”

“…you’re…you’re serious. You’re fucking serious right now?

“…I am.”

“Christ.”

—

It was all Jason’s fault, after all. He had persuaded Tim with intent to fuck up, but bitterly he would admit to only himself that he did so because he was lonely. That he had come home from the deafen grave to no home, no father, and no friends who thought him right in his head or in the heart—and that it had fucking hurt right down to his core.

He had outreached to Bruce in the wrong way and tarnished what his father had thought of him—no longer Batman’s fallen soldier; now he was his lasting mistake.

He had gone to Dick, painted in his colors, as a game for the Bat’s and the right son to play. Let him be Dick—golden child of Gotham City—and let him believe there was a chance to belong for once. Dick didn’t like playing his games and, surprise surprise, he couldn’t see through the Jester’s laughing performance.

He tried for Tim—lost little Timmy with no Daddy Bats to guide him. Replacement was weak—it would be easy to twist his neck under the guise of friendship.

He had no fucking idea Tim was as fucking lonely and misplaced as him.

He had no fucking idea Tim would ever fucking latch onto him for life support.

He had no fucking idea that he would begin to like the little fucker more than just his new play thing.

He really had no fucking idea it would ever turn out like this.

—

“Ha! Love! You love me! That’s…that’s adorable, Pretender. Goddamn precious!”

“…”

“I bet you want me to say I love you back? We kiss? Run into the sunset? Have a Malibu wedding on the coast and adopt a thousand little robins?”

“…”

“What’s the matter, baby? Did the cat cut off your tongue? Come on, Pretender, tell me how much you fucking love me.”

—

The words wouldn’t stop streaming out of his mouth, because if Jason allowed himself the time to think, he might break down and stop what he’s doing. His mind raced and all he can let himself do is let the insults spill out, blocking the rock which had dropped on top of his weak heart.

He already had Tim on his back, pushed down by the hard shove to his lithe form, and he hovered over him. He held the knife to his neck, blade dragging across the armor and writing a line over the scar of yesterday.

He couldn’t stop himself from hissing the verbal abuse, only fueled by the pathetic fear and denial that…fuck it…that someone cared again. Someone who had plenty to love, to adore him for all his worth, to…to not drag down him into the grave Jason had never really left behind.

Tim was never meant to love him.

He shouldn’t be in love with him.

And Jason was never suppose have fallen in love back.

—

“You think you mean anything to me? You? Please. You’re just a pretty little booty call. To everyone. What else could you possibly do for me besides give a good bj every once in a while?”

“…”

“Nothing to say? Aw, come on, baby, nothing all?”

—

A wet line drew itself out from under Red Robin’s mask, cascading down the skin and onto the ground by his head. Jason stiffened, body paralyzed over the frozen one underneath him, and he almost dropped the knife.

He’s done it.

Jason stood and Tim does not stir as more tears emerge from his emotionless face and dropped to the floor, gathering in dark spots on the concrete. Jason hid the guilt-ridden frown under his mask, white lenses blocking out the horrified teal as he stared down at the boy crying without making a single noise.

He’s broken Tim Drake.

He’s gotten him to his level. Pretender knows his pain—the rejection he was dealt with when he reached out for something, but was denied because of him.

Jason’s boot shifted and scraped against the concrete floor, escaping before he could hear the anguished sob rip from the teenage boy’s trembling body—he left before he could turn back and try to take it all back. He flew away before he could fall to his knees and tell Tim the truth—he loved him too, even if he’d never love him right.

Jason had finally gotten his revenge—he didn’t want it anymore.


	2. Really Not Fine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim liked to pretend that he was fine, waiting for the day when it turned out to be true.

The smile he wears is made out of heavy red wax, dashed across his face with a child’s careless action—it can fade, it can smudge into the pale peach of his skin, but he is certain it is painted on so well that it covers the pain resigning underneath. He takes comfort in that fact as the days pass and the Gotham nights dazzle their fake stars into an ink sky—counting one…two…three weeks.

Twenty one days.

Five hundred twenty-two hours.

Thirty one thousand three hundred and thirty-one minutes.

One million eight hundred seventy-nine thousand eight hundred sixty one…sixty two…sixty three…sixty four…sixty five since…

(“You think you mean anything to me? You? Please.”)

It comes up again—this festering ball of panic that shoots up his lungs and rolls about in his throat, blocking air while it numbs his chest. Tim clears his throat and swallows salvia to clear the passage way, but all it does is spread the dryness in his mouth and make him thirst for more.

More what? More time? More pain?

Water is his pain, he supposes—he drinks it down until his stomach is full and even when he is sick by the weight, he tempts to fill it up again. He’s greedy with time as well, staring at the passing minutes expecting that any day now it’ll go away. He waits eagerly for when the emptiness breaks, the sorrow fades away, and the charades he so masterfully plays becomes his reality.

(“What’s the matter, baby? Did the cat cut off your tongue? Come on, Pretender, tell me how much you fucking love me.”)

The ball floats higher and Tim feels a painful sensation in some sense. It does not harm him physically, but he feels it burning deep—acid words melting the inside of his soul into puddles of nothing and everything he is.

(Pathetic) Jason’s voice rumbles harshly through his head, as if he were standing right beside him and holding his head still as he whispered venom. (Poor little Replacement with his pathetic heartaches—poor, useless pitiful baby)

Tim purses his lips and flexed his fingers, fighting the urge to reach and touch—to drag Jason back into him, rage and hatred and violence sinking into his limp body.

He’s not there; he has to remind himself. Jason is somewhere out there, but he’s not here and he doesn’t want you. Remember? He never wanted you.

(And lesser part of him shrieks out, choking on his tears; ‘Why?’

‘Why wasn’t I good enough?’

‘Why can’t you love me too?’

‘Why can’t it be me?’)

Tim slid his teeth over his bottom lip and pressed down until he felt a sting and tastes metal on his tongue. The thoughts deafen as his eyes come into focus on the papers clattering his desk, pen hooked onto the inky end of his signature. He breathes, recalls what he has to do, and paints back on his wide smile—if only for himself.

The ache bundles into the cluster (‘why why why Jason why’) that settles inside his chest, beneath the muscle of his heart. He closes his eyes and lets it throb before he went back to work—seconds parting him farther from twenty-one days prior.

—

“Hey, Tim? Timmy? Timmy Tim-Tim. Haven’t heard from you in a while.”

“No, I guess you haven’t. Something on your mind, Dick?”

“Could ask you the same question…why are you smiling like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re being forced to by gun point.”

—

He hasn’t slept and therefore he doesn’t dream. The subconscious is a funny thing—when one wants to rest and relax, it magnifies one’s anxieties, their fears, and all their tied up emotions into agonizing nightmares to which they wake up with a soaked pillow and their own screams.

Tim tortures himself as it is with the ‘whys’; he doesn’t need his dreams twisting Jason into a creature which spews venom as it claws open his chest.

When nights like this occur (in which case it is every night), Tim finds himself propped up against the window, staring outside into an empty Gotham sky with no drive, no will to move, and no heart to care. In his indolent state, the feelings flowed out of him and he allows him to think about the night that will soon be four weeks ago.

Jason had persuaded him the first time, relinquishing his weapons in favor of a truce, and Tim had rightfully been wary of the sudden change in tone. His mind flooded with memories of fists crashing into his stomach and bullet sprawling through his cape; instinct told him to tell Jason to screw off. The ten year old child that still beat inside, whose eyes shined with admiration, begged Tim to soften up; we’re lonely, he sworn it said to him, and so is he.

He should have ignored that side of him; but he didn’t. That was his first mistake.

The second mistake was letting himself collapse under Jason’s gravity so easily, as if he were made out of mud and wood with no structure to support himself. He doesn’t remember when he became so dependent on Jason for support. He doesn’t recall giving himself permission to let that tiny bit of affection feverishly grow into something out of his control. It all happened so quickly—this thing he felt spreading throughout him like a virus, making him sicker and sicker still.

Jason slipped one night and called him ‘Babybird’—his sick heart jumped and caught in his throat and Tim knew what was wrong with him.

That virus was love and he was sick with it. He was in love with Jason Todd—angry, violent, impulsive, defective dead boy with the smile of a heartbreaker.

Tim should have left well enough alone. It was one thing to be in love with an unpredictable man, it was another to blurt it out. One can survive on keeping their emotions inside, he’s done so before. He could watch Jason from far, smile at him under a mask, and pretend that his heart wasn’t screaming for him to rush up and hold the man close.

Part of him had sworn Jason had returned the feelings.

Tim is horribly when he works on emotional impulse—he’d like to say he saw the rejection coming but that wouldn’t be true. He was blind sighted by it, as if Jason had simply took out his gun and shot him point blank between the eyes.

(“You think you mean anything to me? You? Please.”)

It stung and burned as strong as the day Jason had said it. If Tim was a lesser man (or stronger; better?) he would have willed himself to cry again, the anguish rolling down his back and quaking his body. He did not, however.

Instead, he steeled himself, with the vibrations of anxiety crawling under his skin, and pressed his forehead against the window.

It’s fine that Jason didn’t love me back—he smiled weakly, fooling himself into believing that—I’m fine, really. I’m really fine with that.

—

“Rob?…Ro—Tim. You sure you’re…okay there, bud?”

“Yeah…why wouldn’t I be?”

“I…I dunno. You just don’t seem like you’re…”

“I am, Kon. Trust me; everything is alright.”

—

Everyone kept asking him if he was okay. Over and over and over again, they came to him as he huddled under the safety of work and the long hours from patrol, watching his back with their questions floating in the air. None of them knew, he was certain, because it was a two-man own secret laced with shame. Jason had no reason to gloat as it were—he had already broken Tim and using the event as blackmail would be fruitless.

Tim wouldn’t say it because that would mean swallowing the little pride he had left—how that much survived, he would never know.

They all asked if he was okay and Tim would tell them he was fine as he smiled tightly. They never believed him.

That was fine; Tim just needed to believe it himself.

—

“R…report…West Gotham…need assistance…”

“…ssssssssss…”

“Red Robin requesting…medical assistance…Is anyone there?”

“…sssss…ear you.”

“Hello?”

“I said, I hear you loud and clear, kid. I’m on the way. Stay put.”

“…you…Hood?”

“Yeah, kid. It’s me. Hold the fuck on, will you?”

—

He’s bleeding right from the gaping hole opened over his stomach, dark red coating his hand like fresh paint, and bile rushes up his throat in response to flight-and-fight. He needs to settle down somewhere, gather his thoughts, and keep himself breathing until rescue came.

He kept swinging, his wet hand slick on the grapple’s handle, choking on air and blood and hoping that by some miracle he either a) made home before rescue came b) his hand slid and he crashed to the ground so he would not have to face this.

Face Jason. Not now; five weeks, thirty five days, five thousand eight hundred and eight hours, and seconds were ticking farther away but his heart still ached. He wasn’t read, the ball in his chest was still too tight, still burned too much.

If he saw Jason, he wouldn’t be fine anymore.

He inhaled and tried to smile—tried to pretend that in that moment, blood cascading down his thighs, that he was happy—but all his mouth did was stretch awkwardly, straining his skin into awful curves.

He couldn’t smile. He couldn’t pretend.

Tim’s hand slipped (or had he let go?) and felt himself being gripped by gravity and yanked down, captured in a down spiral of air.

Something smacked into him and tore him free from glide, leather arms caging him against a concrete chest. The ball in his chest felt like lead and Tim shut his eyes, feeling himself break apart again.

Break again in Jason’s arms. 

—

“I told you to stay put! Jesus, are you deaf?”

“I didn’t…I didn’t want…”

“Kid? Red…Tim? Are you okay?”

“…no, Jason. No, I’m really, really not.”


End file.
